Posted
by
kdawson
on Monday May 26, 2008 @11:02PM
from the what's-on-your-ipod-eh dept.

SpaceAdmiral writes "The Canadian government is secretly negotiating to join the US and the EU in an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The agreement would give border guards the power to search iPods and cellphones for illegal downloads, as well as to force ISPs to hand over customer information without a warrant. David Fewer, staff counsel at the University of Ottawa's Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, characterizes ACTA this way: 'If Hollywood could order intellectual property laws for Christmas what would they look like? This is pretty close.'"

A copied song--as it was not produced by the authorized agent--could be considered "counterfeit." At least, that's the closest to understanding that I can get to by guessing. It sounds like someone's buggered all their sense away.

I'm a proponent of IP laws and copyright. But how the heck is counterfeiting and IP fit together?? Sorry, but it doesn't make any sense.

Counterfeiting to me means items produced as a "look a like" or in similar context, without a license to use the trademark. So, candy or tires or even CPUs can be counterfeit. But IP is not, because only counterfeit is reverse engineering. IP generally gets copied exactly. So how the heck is that counterfeit??

The only way they can apply it is if you have counterfeit CDs or DVDs or similar. But that still applies to the media marks, not the IP. The video is not counterfeit, the media is.

the act of reproducing all or any substantial part of
(a) a musical work embodied in a sound recording,
(b) a performer's performance of a musical work embodied in a sound recording, or
(c) a sound recording in which a musical work, or a performer's performance of a musical work, is embodiedonto an audio recording medium for the private use of the person who makes the copy does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the musical work, the performer's performance or the sound recording.

Sonds to me like the assholes in power are trying to circumvent the laws for the benefit of American corporate interests..

At the simplest level, they could just plug it into a PC under their control and try to play a video. The way iTunes works, a DRM locked file won't play on an "unauthorized" PC. If the file does play, they could assume it's an illegal copy.

Obviously there's a good chance this won't be the case and such detection methods would be easy to defeat but this is what I imagine their thought process would be.

It's going to be a while. People who were undergrads when napster was out aren't even able to run for president yet. When these people are the politicians and the dominant party, what new issues will they be missing out on? Will we be seen as a stodgy class that refuses to give up these stupid privacy laws that make it so that the darn kids can't join 15 sites at once? Perhaps the pendulum will swing the other way, and they'll be getting angry because we're not letting artists control their works, because n

The baby boomers couldn't wait for their parent's generation to move on and allow them to legalize pot. Logical thinking about copyright won't happen either.

America is moving towards an information economy. Those in power are aware of the transformation and are trying to protect future American interests.

When the manufacturing is all being done in the cheapest places (globalization) America will only have her service economy, IP (If America owns Hollywood, she can buy and sell the world's spare time), and such control over business dealings in foreign lands as her businesses can muster and enforce.

Can you get rich by doing your neighbor's laundry if he is doing your in return? The GDP generated by Americans doing services for Americans is only wealth in terms of employment.

If IP is not protected, the only remaining wealth in America will be foreign businesses. Foreign businesses can be nationalized as soon as America's military isn't a major threat.* So suppose these events happened:

That's it! Those two things would bring America crashing to her knees, and destroy the cultural, economic, and military might of the greatest nation on earth. There really is a 3: profit for many powerful people. This is what America's leaders are doing about the situation:

Hiding the extent of the dangerMisguidedly passing draconian IP protection lawsMaintaining a large, secret technological lead (black tech: its real. No, I don't believe in UFOs)

That's what they're doing. I pass no judgment here, I'm just saying, that is the cause of these actions.

*Did you know that 50% of American businesses overseas (overseas divisions)are owned by the Chinese and theoretically controlled by the Chinese government? Did you know that the Saudis can take controll of foreign firms with the flick of a pen?

I understand IP. I understand what is theft, and what isn't. I don't abide by customs searches for somebody's IP. I bought and paid for every single piece of music I have. None were torrented, or obtained through nebulous means from a copyright respect perspective.

And the music moguls now want to enforce the ability to check on me. With WHAT??? How can a customs agent possibly determine the MP3s that I have are, or are not purchased with validity???? THEY CANNOT!

IP protection isn't the backbone of the US economy. It's an intangibles-fantasy to think so. That's not what my father built, his father built, my mother built, and so on. It's the asset protection mechanism of the nonsensical. It's not innovative, it's not producing return on the intangible asset, it's as flimsy as derivates. Yet I respect the concept of asset ownership, and my rights under the law as a consumer. Now some nitwit's pressured various treaty signators to look at my damn MP3 player-- where's the justice in that??????

How can a customs agent possibly determine the MP3s that I have are, or are not purchased with validity

When it comes to checking all iPods, they can't. What is far more likely is that if they have you tagged for some other problem this will mean they can then have your iPod checked over for possible infringing material.

I'm wondering whether they will be thinking that a full iPod means the content is pirated or not.

Also, it's not just music that can be stored on a iPod, or similar music devices. You can stor

I strongly disagree with your assertion that IP protection will "protect America's future". If anything, IP protection will strangle America's ability to compete with foreign competitors.

There's even a precedent: when America was entering the Industrial Revolution, it built up a great deal of its powerful industrial base by "stealing" inventions from Europe. The European countries protested a lot about the U.S. stealing industrial secrets, but that didn't stop the U.S. from using those ideas to leapfrog its competitors into an economic powerhouse.

Doesn't that sound similar to the relationship that the U.S. has with China right now? What could the U.S. possibly offer China that would be worth China deliberately ignoring all those good inventions that it can use to build itself up?

If America really wanted to maintain a technological lead, it would be investing in educating its citizens in hard math & science, investing in applied research, and helping U.S.-only companies use the fruits of that research.

Instead, we get "leaders" who defund public education & finance anti-science propaganda campaigns, and who seem to think that America can keep a position of "world leadership" by waving its military dick around. Between those kinds of leaders & the idiots who blindly follow them, America has pretty much set itself up to be given the "Most Deserving of Becoming a Has-Been Superpower" award.

The baby boomers built the country? Please! They were sitting around protesting, free-loving, and smoking dope while their parents and grandparents actually built what we have today. No one on this planet has the same entitlement mentality as United States baby boomers. No one.

You don't know me. I do like my life, I work hard, and I also vote. Forgive me for expressing dismay over the possible adoption of ridiculous policies.Where do you draw the line between whining and merely stating one's opinion? Seems to me like you are a whiny baby-boomer who can't handle the criticism of younger people (I'm 27). See how easy it is to flip that around? I can argue with you and make up negative things about you, rather than actually attacking your opinion with logic.

Maybe it's the product of growing up under the red scare, but between the anti-Vietnam movement, the war on drugs, "Family Values", the war on terrorism, and the bare minimum of environmental laws/cheap gas/tax breaks for SUVs, the boomers' voting record will probably cause them to be remembered as the most cowardly and coddled generation in history.

The baby boomers are (were?) a bunch of dope-smoking draft dodgers that have run this country into the ground while their parents wonder why exactly it is that they fought World War II, since they just ended up living under authoritarianism anyway.Over Christmas, my now almost 95 year-old grandfather apologized to me, my sister and our 2 first cousins for the sorry state of the world that my parents generation created.

However, the boomers did such a good job of screwing things up, and peppering our generati

What really bothers me about these international agreements is that, at least in Canada, they are often signed without public involvement. While I don't have any specific examples, I've heard of cases where the Canadian charter (most supreme law in Canada, similar to the Constitution in the US) was over ruled by international law.

I mean, besides writing my federal representatives what can I, as a voting citizen, do about this ? Making amendments to the Charter and Constitution is a REALLY BIG DEAL and not easy to do. But signing international treaties which can over rule our most supreme national laws is standard practice.

I think you don't get it.This is part of "Make everyone criminal". If not enough people are breaking rules, you invent some more rules that they have to break in order to live comfortably.

It produces fear and guilt and thought fear conformity and obedience (you don't want to stand out and give anyone reason to go harass you because you know there is something to be harassed about). It gives base for bullying inconvenient people: they can use your filled ipod to give you minor bitch slap as well as to do mon

How would border guards be able to tell an illegal song on an iPod (i.e. downloaded without buying it in any form), from a song ripped from your private CD collection (which as the RIAA would have us believe, is illegal too), from a song bought from the iTunes store?

Seriously, how are they going to take my ipod of 8,000+ songs, mp3s, ogg files, Linux.iso images, podcasts, etc., hash them all and compare those to the ones in their database?

I change the ID3v2 tags, add missing ID3v1 tags, store lyrics and album art INTO the actual song file itself, and so on. All of these modifications change the hash. Now because my hash doesn't match theirs, I'm somehow guilty of copyright infringement? I don't think so.

Time to replace the stock firmware on the ipod with one that embeds AES-256 onboard and has to be unlocked before you can play any music from it.

How would border guards be able to tell an illegal song on an iPod (i.e. downloaded without buying it in any form), from a song ripped from your private CD collection (which as the RIAA would have us believe, is illegal too), from a song bought from the iTunes store?

This action brings two thoughts to mind.1. The war on Copyright Infringement has succedded where the War on Terror & War on Drugs have failed.2. They're essentially making a civil enforcement matter into a Federal enforcement

Think of it like speed traps. You, presumably, sped. The speed trap captures this, takes that moment-in-time shot, and you get the bill in the mail. You are, at this point, guilty until proven innocent. Yes, you are guilty, you were speeding; (important) technicalities such as calibration times of the speed trap, etc. aside... you were speeding.

Now it's up to you to 1. challenge this and 2. provide evidence that either you were NOT speeding, or that you were speeding for a damned good reason which exempts you from getting a ticket.

---

So to get back on-topic..."How would border guards be able to tell an illegal song on an iPod"If it's in the AAC format with Apple's Fairplay DRM - which they license to nobody and all that.. then it's probably legit.If it's an MP3, it'll get added to the list of 'probably-illegal' bits of music.

"from a song ripped from your private CD collection"1. Challenge it, 2. provide evidence that you, in fact, are in posession of that CD.

"(which as the RIAA would have us believe, is illegal too)"If that is indeed the law - which, last time I checked, it's not - yhen you're screwed even in the above case regardless.

"from a song bought from the iTunes store?"Presuming you purchased an unprotected MP3 - that purchase should be listed in your iTunes Account. 1. Challenge it, 2. provide the evidence - name Apple if you want.

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Now, personally, I don't think this will actually be checked all -that- actively. Lines at airports and the like are queued enough as it is and they're strapped for money just to check for things like, you know, actual terrorists, drug smugglers, etc. That's not to say I'm complacent - I already sent in my letter of protest several weeks back, but we're not exactly part of the G8 countries so that's probably going to do fook all good - but I don't think that the first kid with a few MP3s on his system is going to be shipped to Gitmo either.

Now, with that out of the way, the clauses regarding the restrictions of privacy tools use online (and, possibly, offline; that TrueCrypted drive you've got and such) I find far, far more unsettling (and was the majority of the body of my protest letter; personally I can't really justify saying "I'm only downloading a movie! What's the harm!?", but I did point out the ridiculousness of involving law enforcement officials in this, never mind the penance, and my disagreement with those clauses on those grounds).I'm still waiting for them to hook this into a "That way we'll get the terrorists, too!"-type defense argument.

But maybe they're not, and they're expecting people, to just fume at the worst bits, then blank those out and just leave it with the anti-piracy bits which might be grudgingly accepted.

"How would border guards be able to tell an illegal song on an iPod"If it's in the AAC format with Apple's Fairplay DRM - which they license to nobody and all that.. then it's probably legit.

It's pretty unlikely that any border guard is going to be checking the format of any random song on any random traveler's iPod. Most will most likely happen in the worst case is that the border crosser will have to get a 'certificate of compliance' from a record store or Apple store. You'd bring your i

a better question is how they'd know if I had paid for the music I purchased from sites like beatport.com or djdownload.com, which are 320kbit MP3 files with no labeling that distinguishes them from any other MP3 I have..

yeah, uh, I dunno about you, but I haven't dared bring an important electronic device (aside from my camera and my cellphone) across the border - and I don't plan to start now. Encryption would likely equate to near-instant confiscation and detainment, if I refused to cooperate.

If I urgently need a laptop while I'm on a trip, I'll bloody well buy one:)

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Article VI:...and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

Any provision of the constitution can be done away with by getting 51 Senators and the President to sign a treaty. Failing that, you can get 5 judges to interpret it away (as in the recent decision allowing states to seize private property for any economic purpose).

Any provision of the constitution can be done away with by getting 51 Senators and the President to sign a treaty.

FALSE. Treaties have the same strength as a law passed by congress, but are not exempt from the Constitution. "Our constitution declares a treaty to be the law of the land. It is, consequently, to be regarded in courts of justice as equivalent to an act of the legislature, whenever it operates of itself, without the aid of any legislative provision." -- Foster vs Nelson

No they cannot. Un-Constitutional treaties conflict with the Constitution, which is itself more potent than any mere law. It is in fact the creating statement of the government itself, and no mere law can contradict it and remain standing.Un-Constitutional judicial rulings are void, even if today's generation of judges, executives and legislators are too anti-American to be governed by that simple fact. It's just "might makes right", and not actually right or just. And likely to eventually be overturned, as

Rights are universal. Whether the US government is obligated to protect the rights of anyone other than a US citizen is a matter of much debate, all inconclusive. But abusing those rights of any citizen makes a mockery of liberty. At the hands of a US government employee under official orders, such a mockery makes a travesty of the basis of the US government as a government created by American people to protect those rights.

There are a handful of exceptions to the 4th Amendment.exigent circumstancessearch incident to a lawful arrestthe automobile exception-the container exception (containers in an automobile)plain view/feel

Just today I read that the the drug war fuelled by America's love of cocaine and marijuana is resulting in thousands of people getting killed in Mexican gang wars over smuggling routes, yet the US War on drugs policy persists, keeping the black market trade the biggest and bloodiest industry in the world.

On the north border they want to remove the rights of people just to make a few cocaine snorting media exec's happy.

And we have seen what US foreign policy has done to the middle east.

Its no wonder so many people hate the US, their politicians have systematically contributed to most of the crap that is currently going on in the world all in the name of consumerism and captialism. Its not about democracy at all, its all about how cheap their gas is and what boat they can buy with their annual bonus.

Can we just stick all the music and movie industry execs in prison now and have done with it, rather than having to shoot all those politicians later? I mean, it would save several years and a lot of trouble.

I say let'em review every single electronic device we have, ipods, computer, phone, hearing aid, pace maker and watches. It will take a week to cross a border or take a plane -- the economic reality is a far greater deterrent to this kind of ludicrous action than all the belly-aching complaints.
Mule

You seem to think that this would be a problem for US Customs. I travel to the US by car once every two weeks or so, and it doesn't matter to them if they need to hold up a car for five seconds or five minutes; their shift ends when it ends. It's more work for each individual traveller to the States, but all in all, it's still a day's worth of work to the average customs officer.

My MP3s do not have 'skanky' stamped on them. If I rip one of my CDs it is OK, but if I have a rip of someone else's it does not get stamped 'illegal'. They will just guess, and based on the fact that there is unlikely to be anyone with an iPod full of legal tunes, they can just collect iPods for their friends and families.

I seem to recall that Alan Cox, and probably others, were so disturbed by the DMCA in the US that they vowed never to visit the US again. So, the Linux Symposium has been held in Ottawa for some time.

Will this force Linux conferences to be held outside the US, Canada and the EU? Of course Alan Cox lives in the EU. It really makes one not wish to even travel through the region, which is pretty difficult if you think about air travel hubs, etc.

When will we get a notion of priority in this sick world? We've got so many issues in this world, much to do with security and protection; Please tell me why pirated music will take priority when our current ACTUAL border security is a joke? I'm imagining a scene where some guy is getting shook down for copied music while hoodlums rape a woman nearby unquestioned. Lets get a list of frikkin priorities here.

There's already a system for dealing with illegal material, and there are very good reasons for requiring a warrant for such searches. The issue in question is already covered. Is this nonsense really necessary?

The baby boomers built the country? Please! They were sitting around protesting, free-loving, and smoking dope while their parents and grandparents actually built what we have today. No one on this planet has the same entitlement mentality as United States baby boomers. No one.

I thought that WE had little respect for our elders, but you punks take the cake (and eat it too). We didn't "sit around protesting", we marched around protesting. And what we protested was what the previous generations had fucked up.

We were being drafted to be cannon fodder for a useless war. Some of us volunteered for that useless war out of patriotism (I did). The protests finally eneded thath war. Meanwhile you little whiners are too busy chasing filthy lucre and getting your nipples pierced and foreheads tattood to care that an oil man becaise President and started a useless war for the sole purpose of enriching himself. At least my dad's generation's rich people who starte dthe Vietnam war thought )prehaps correctly) that they were fighting communism, a laudible goal to them.

My generation's protests stopped the war and made the President resign. Where are your protests of the Iraq war? Your stupid generation doesn't even have to be drafted!

Some of us protested the rape of the environment. We got the Clean Air act and teh Clean Water act passed. We got CFCs banned. What are you gutless wimps doing about global warmning? Buying SUVs!

My generation built sna is still building houses, like the one you live in. The parts of the electrical grid my dad din't build were built by those who followed him.

The third page of the article explains how the US is able to get away with such outrageous requests:

In a situation similar to what happened in the Softwood Lumber trade dispute, Canadians could face hefty penalties if it does not comply with ACTA after the agreement has been completed.In a situation similar to what happened in the Softwood Lumber trade dispute, Canadians could face hefty penalties if it does not comply with ACTA after the agreement has been completed.

So the proposal is, "surrender your citizens rights or we will make it cost you." The answer should be, "without rights, you will just take our money anyway, no thanks."

It's especially bizarre, since there is no way this law could be enforced. The Supreme Court would prevent it from being enforced under the principles of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Any politician supporting this treaty would be an idiot, because he would back our country into an inescapable hole.

Paragraph 1 of the Charter says that

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

and Paragraph 8 says that

Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure.

This is definitely unreasonable search and seizure, and there's no way you can justify searching private devices without cause for copyright infringement. Also note that this paragraph says "everyone", not "every citizen of Canada".

The problem is that Canada has this big loophole in it's charter of rights called the "non withstanding clause"

That's not a loophole, it is a safeguard in the event a critical or popular law gets struck down (e.g. a specific law that allows holding a minor or other individual when it is determined that he has a pattern of dangerous crimes that make him a threat to society and himself.) Any law passed under that clause also automatically sunsets after five years. If the population wants to get rid of the law, they can easily vote for another party.

So a critical law which violates rights should still be allowed to stand?

Including or excluding laws that put violent criminals in jail?

Seriously, if you believe that the example I gave shouldn't be allowed to stand, you might as well give children a carte blanche to commit murder. The law in question was designed to prevent young offenders known to have a pattern of criminal behaviour from committing additional crimes. Within 24 hours of it being struck down, the individual stole a car and caused a car accident.

Or a popular law which violates the rights of a minority should be allowed to stand?

At least we will have all of our needs taken care of by the government.

I mean, what do we need? Food, shelter, and companionship.

All are offered free of charge at your local prison.

Sarcasm (maybe not) aside, I mean, how the *uck can someone tell if my iPod has illegal or legal downloads on it? I can tell you for a fact, that I don't even know which are legal or illegal, they all look the same to me. Well, now some of the low bitrate ones, I might question, but how would anybody else?

I'm less sure how they plan to scan the tens of thousands of media files on a given iPod. Perhaps since you're already waiting several hours to check in to make sure you haven't got a pair of nailscissors with which you might manicure someone to death the rationale is to make you wait at the other end too.

Exactly. This would help identify you as a thief [wired.com]. You might also want to read the RIAA's letter [copyright.gov] to the US Copyright office in 2006. For those PDF-averse, here are some highlights:

The Register was right in 2003 to be "skeptical" of the merits of any fair use analysis that asserts that space-shifting or format-shifting is a noninfringing use.... This is particularly the case in today's market, where inexpensive legitimate digital copies of most types of works are readily available, and increasingly can be obtained through online download services. Where a market is functioning to serve the demand otherwise being fulfilled by unauthorized copying, the likelihood that the unauthorized copying is fair use is diminished.

and

Similarly, creating a back-up copy of a music CD is not a non-infringing use.

Infowars and PrisonPlanet. Take their output, add to the mainstream media, divide by two and you might get a picture of reality.

Well, how about another group of nutjobs - the "Federal Reserve". Since the CPI numbers are meaningless, and the GDP numbers are bogus (compare pre-Clinton and post-Clinton numbers for a good example why), let's look at the relative buying power of the US Dollar, since that's a lot harder to fudge.

The numbers to look at are the Broad and Major Currency numbers. These indices are relative to a specific point in time - Jan 97 and Mar 73, respectively).

So, looking at the most recent YOY data (APR-APR) - the US dollar has dropped 9.3% YOY compared to a broad group of our trading partners, and nearly 12% YOY when compared to other major currencies. Contrast this to a 4% YOY (broad) or a 4.7% (major) for the 12 month period before that.

The exchange rate has little to do with purchasing power, since it is heavily dependent on trade. The exchange rate has gone up because the US has a trade defecit, which is flooding foregin markets with dollars. Add to this the fact that the dollar has long been overvalued, and it's not hard to understand why the exchange rate is falling. It is basically a market correction, which should utimatelly ballance out our trade defecit (as exchange rates fall, imports will decrease and exports will increase).

Relative purchasing power must be determined by compairing some kind of price index (such as the CPI). Sorry to burst your bubble, but that's simply the only way to compare relative purchasing power. The exchange rate only effects the price of imported goods, and therefore does not say a lot about price levels in general. Especially when you consider that China fixes their exchange rate to the dollar, and all petrolium is sold in dollars.

What amazes me is it says about searching iPod's for illegal content... And in Canada currently it's LEGAL to download music. (Despite the CRIA's objections.)

What amazes me is how they figure they can identify illegal content.

Seriously, how the hell can a border services agent tell that the MP3s on my iPod have all been legally ripped from CDs I have purchased? They can't. I buy probably close to about $1000 CDN in CDs each year, all of which end up ripped and played on my iPods or in mixes.

If they simply look and say anything which isn't an AAC bought from the iTunes store then they'll be flagging a tremendous amount of people for no good reason.

There is simply no way that from an iPod you can verify the pedigree of the songs on it.

For so long I've been proud to live in Canada, but with that fucktard Harper at the helm they're trying more and more to make it America 2.

Amen to that. Harper et al are really sucking up to Bush just far too much. Though, I must say I reserve some bile for the asshat American government (NOT everyday Americans, for you knee jerk mods) for shoving these &*^%&*(^ laws down everyone's throats. America's chief export nowadays seems to be laws to protect the *AA's and screw the rest of us.

Ah yes, how dare we obey our own laws. You ignorant fool, it doesn't matter if what we do in Canada is illegal in the USA, it matters if it's illegal in Canada. Want to change it? Too fucking bad. It's our country, you have your own.

GWB and his parties aren't smart enough to understand what they are doing. What they understand is they have power and that it is valuable... they have made it available for sale and there are ample buyers out there buying their piece of the government and by extension, control of the world.

I doubt any explanation could be more accurate and simple at the same time.

Hey, don't pin the blame just on Bush. The democrats have been in the pocket of the entertainment/media industries for years. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid stand up there and shill for every new copyright enforcement law that big media writes for them.

Pay attention to this shit, because party politics is just another big, fat, red herring the corporate drones are waving in your face. Neither party has your interests at heart.

"We should not forget free flow of slave labor for US agriculture. It might be claimed that no US Citizen would take the kind of work mega farms import Mexican citizens to do, but why not pay those people US wages and treat them as immigrants rather than keep them locked up "

Well, if they would come in through legal channels...they would be treated like any other legal immigrant. I don't think anyone has much a problem with legal immigration into the US.

Repeal copyright. All of it. If they want to fight, give 'em a fight. Let us not piddle about minor interpretations of legalisms. Let's gut the whole thing. Patents too. Both of them were designed to promote progress and now the serve the opposite purpose. They should be done away with.

Patents shall not issue. Copyrights shall not be granted. All patents and copyrights are void. (New amendment)

nless you have copyright the only way you get art is when rich people keep a pet artist.

In the European Union, much local film and art music is produced with the support of state subsidies. Private patronage isn't as big here as in the U.S. If a government is committed to keeping the arts strong, and if it fairly distributes money evenly to all artists instead of just those a government official favours, then things work very well even without the notion of copyright. France is an excellent example of how state arts funding works well when certain arts are important but not always economically profitable. IRCAM is now in its third decade of generous state funding.

It is all stupid anyway. I work in Azebaijan (lots of restrictions on P2P and VOIP) and before that I worked in the UAE (where VOIP is illegal). Several other crazy places (like Thailand where they banned YouTube) before that. I am used to crazy laws. I now use a proxy in Switzerland that costs me $5 a month because it gets me through the censors anonymously using SSH. As these stupid laws proliferate the anonymous proxies in Switerland will have a golden era. US, Canadian and EU citizens will now need them as well so that they can carry their iPods empty through customs and go online and fill them up the other side. If you want to avoid the eyes of the MAAFIA use SSH to a proxy in Switzerland (land of the free).

Avoid the proxies in Sweden etc. as they are subject to EU law, Switzerland is not subject to EU law and do no reveal your identity to anyone.